


Mr Childermass Calls [a remix]

by Lilliburlero



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV)
Genre: Class Differences, Consent Issues, Dubious Consent, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Magic Made Them Do It, Post-Canon, Remix, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-12 13:08:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11737704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: John Childermass, on business in Venice, calls on the Greysteel household, but only Arabella is at home.A remix ofArabella's Visit, byDancingsalome.*Note: magical consent issues all over the shop, brief references to more serious sexual abuses in the past.





	Mr Childermass Calls [a remix]

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dancingsalome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dancingsalome/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Arabella's Visit](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8011852) by [Dancingsalome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dancingsalome/pseuds/Dancingsalome). 



> Thank you to [fengirl88](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fengirl88/pseuds/fengirl88) for beta reading.

John Childermass had been in Venice for a day and a night; not long enough, even for one possessed of his formidable powers of observation, to grasp every difference between Venetian standards of conduct and English. Perhaps it was quite usual here for a footman to sprawl on the stone bench in the courtyard with a giggling maid upon each knee, and the concierge in her widow’s cap to sanction it with an obscene gesture and a piercing whistle, or for the boy who showed callers to the lobby to turn to them half-a-dozen times upon the single flight of stairs, assume an exaggerated contrapposto, and wink knowingly. Someone whose livelihood had been made largely upon street corners, noticing things, was accustomed to such solicitations, but the average Englishman, John considered, might be ruffled. Likely they were all drunk, but midday intoxication seemed incompatible with both the popularity of these lodgings among well-to-do tourists, and their unimpeachable cleanliness: scrubbed boards and ruthlessly swept corners, freshly laundered drapes and well-beaten carpets, the bright resinous smell of polish in the air—

He might have ignored the high, gnat-like whine—there are a lot of gnats in a city built on water—but the pinprick of green light not before, but _behind_ his eyes, in the centre of his skull, was unmistakable, and its source was the apartments to which he sought admission. Mrs Strange was not a magician, and her history would surely disincline her to dabble. One of the Greysteels, then: probably the daughter, whose disgrace (less Lord Byron than Miss Clairmont) had grown more interesting the more he’d found out about it, which was not the way finding out more about disgraced young persons usually took him. 

A bell rang. He focussed his mind upon the light; he had no choice but to do so, if he was not to feel giddy or stumble when invited to rise from the spindly vestibule sofa. He identified it as a kind of magic to which he should have devoted more attention and study, but for which he struggled to find time: nigh on nineteen years service to Mr Norrell had left their misanthropic mark upon his character. 

_Parlour magic_ , was how he thought of it, how he dismissed it, but it was undeniably one of the most active branches of the science at present; new spells devised almost daily, and published in the magical columns of the newspapers. He took a breath, and concentrated once more: one of the Conviviality family, possibly, but of a pungency more suited to an actress’s salon in Covent Garden than a drawing-room belonging to English gentlewomen on a Continental tour. He blinked hard. It was a commonplace to say that such spells affected the judgement only, not the will, but that was a distinction in which he did not quite believe. It made too much of desire, as if it were not the most mutable thing on earth. 

A tall, rawboned maid opened the wrought-iron and glass door that led onto the Greysteels' rooms. That frilly goffered cap and busy sprigged print made her height and strength look absurd: she’d be handsome out of them. He wondered, not very urgently, if he’d actually meant that the way he thought it. She smelled of beeswax and fresh-baked bread; he resisted the impulse to slip his arm about her waist as he passed only by shifting his hat from the crook of his left elbow to the crook of his right. Bugger. Well, there it was, and there was no getting out of it now. 

‘You do so much as lay a finger on my precious jewel,’ she murmured, matter-of-factly, ‘and I’ll lib you with a rusty butterknife and stuff your stones down your worthless crop. Mr Childermass, ma’am.’ That was interesting, he thought, and, out of habit, strung the information onto a mental file. For which of her mistresses did she harbour such jealous affection? 

He had his answer quickly: Mrs Strange was, slightly unexpectedly, alone. That could be very good, or very bad indeed. He looked around. She was not the source of the magic; that had gone. 

She put down her work and offered her hand. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure, Mr Childermass?’ 

What a dainty thing her hand was: soft, like mist becoming rain. He wanted to press his lips to it, to suck each of the fingertips in turn, and nuzzle the palm. He did not do these things, because his self-mastery was something of which he was justifiably proud. It didn’t come naturally. He bowed over her hand and let it drop. She indicated the nearest gilt-framed chair. He would have preferred the one across the room; equally he would have liked to sit beside her on the sofa. Will and judgement, he thought. It was not so simple. 

‘I have business here in Venice with a man from Aberdeenshire. But this is a social call merely.’ 

‘That’s—out of character.’ Her eyes sparkled and her lips curved in an impish smile. They were eager lips, they should be upon his: he wouldn’t mind betting she was a hot little kisser. 

‘Mr Norrell’s—departure has given me some of the obligations of a gentleman. And the income of one. I can’t pretend to like the former. Or so I thought, until today.’ 

It felt as if the prim gallantry had been throttled out of him by invisible hands, but she laughed prettily, and a blush rose under the gauzy stuff at her neck. Hellfire, it would be good to tear it away, to put his hand into the front of her gown, yes, he would stand behind her and kiss her neck, and fondle her tits like that, and press her to him so she could feel his stiff yard—damn. He shifted in his seat. He was going to have to put it to her plain. ‘You’ll forgive a direct question, Mrs Strange. Has someone here been performing magic?’ 

‘Flora—Miss Greysteel was practising. I hadn’t imagined it had worked.’ 

Dimly, he registered this as a confirmation of rumour: Miss Clairmont certainly, then. And now the young hoyden had turned her attention to seducing the relicts of magical celebrities. Well, well, well. 

‘Hadn’t you now?’ It came out satirical, even for him. 

Mrs Strange’s face and figure might be considered too angular for the fashion; they were too delicate for his taste—his taste unmodified by magic. Except now, in defiant assertion of her fidelity to a husband who had gone into the dark and would likely not return in her lifetime, her fine features and narrow body showed their keen steel, and he wanted her upon his own account. It was right that they should comfort one another, since they were both— 

The enchantment did not let him complete this thought. Suddenly she was gasping in his arms; her body was hot through layers of muslin, and yet how close her frail bones were to the air. 

‘Widowed,’ she breathed, as he wrenched his mouth from hers. 

‘What was that you said, Mrs Strange?’ 

‘Nothing.’ He looked at her searchingly, but saw she believed she had told the truth. He meant to release her, but found the best he could do was to step back, still holding her shoulders. 

‘My name’s Arabella.’ 

‘I know. Happen you don’t. John.’ 

Her lips framed a wobbling void and her eyes welled. ‘I don’t think I can,’ she said, eventually. Her voice was steady, resolute. 

‘Too close. I understand. I should go.’ 

‘Yes.’ 

He nodded. The parting seemed to demand a kiss which it was nonetheless folly and peril to give. He slid his hands over her puffed sleeves and the exquisite skin of her upper arms, drawing her back to him by the elbows. He kissed her as tenderly as he could manage, barely parting his lips; it was she who pushed her tongue between them. She reached up and loosed his hair, clutching fistfuls of it and tugging insistently. Her eyes remained open. He understood that, he thought: she must use everything she could to remind herself of who he was not. He let his hands rove over her head and nape, her narrow back, the hard wings of her shoulderblades, the small span of her waist in its light stays, and the firm outcurve of her hips. He clasped one cheek of her arse—like a boiled egg in a handkerchief—and thrust up against her belly. If he had a thought in his head it was perhaps to repel her with his lowborn crudity, but that was self-delusion and he knew it: gentlefolk fuck all the same ways that beggars do. 

He disengaged himself to take off his coat and waistcoat, untie his stock. She was fumbling in the neckline of her gown. He pushed away her hand and ripped out the gossamer panel. That was not a modest décolletage for a lady who was—not a widow. He dipped his hand into it and brought out her right breast, running his thumb roughly over the dark, engorged nipple. 

‘Liberty,’ he said, appreciatively. If that didn’t outrage a patriotic English gentlewoman enough to offer a rebuff, he was lost. But more than that, he was telling her something he had unfolded to no-one since he went into Mr Norrell’s service, something he still believed in, despite it all. He thought he knew why, and it had nothing very much to do with the disinhibiting effect of the spell. 

Her eyes were wild and dark with desire; her simply-dressed hair had come down at one side. She gave a ferocious smile, answering his own. ‘Bastard.’ 

He lifted his hand from her in a simple flourish of acknowledgement; she seized his wrist and pulled them into an alcove, out of sight of the door. 

He ducked to kiss her breast, mumbling its hard bleb as he lifted her gown, ran his hand up her quivering thigh, finding her skin fiery through the linen of her drawers. He would have liked to do the same with his tongue, but there was no time. His fingers discovered abundant hair, neither coarse nor fine. He cupped her mound, letting his first finger rise into the cleft, finding her little woman’s yard, which was a nice fat one, as long as the first joint of his thumb, which he circled upon it. She gave a cry, too loud, and he put his lips on hers to stifle it; she moaned into his mouth as he pushed two fingers into her and thrust, none too gently. The action made him ache to replace them with his cock, that throbbed and twitched; he withdrew them to her throaty sigh. 

Her hands were on the flap of his breeches, deftly unbuttoning with her right hand as she rubbed his prick with the heel of her left. Her hand slipped in and hesitated for a moment, finding no smallclothes but a proletarian bundle of shirt-tail. She pushed it aside and grasped him like a nettle. 

‘Egalité,’ she said. 

It would be a damned fine thing if she were to go down on her knees to suck him off, but democracy had its limits. ‘Fair play,' he said. All the same, the magical marshlight was joined for a moment by some others of different hues; he breathed stertorously to contain himself as she frigged him, briskly proficient, _wifely_. He put his hand over hers. 

‘I’m going to take you now, but in the circumstances, it would ease my mind if you said aloud you wanted it.’ 

His mind was not so very uneasy, in truth: he liked to hear obscenity on well-born lips, liked to hear them begging favour of him. He supposed he had got a taste for it from Mr Norrell’s peculiar needs, which at first he hadn’t minded catering to, because to a seventeen-year-old lad who had trouble distinguishing his arse-crack from a haystack-rig they didn’t seem to have anything much to do with fucking at all. Gradually he’d come to see that they did, and how so, but by then voicing his disgust would have been very much worse than useless, so he carried on in the same fashion, warping his own nature to suit his master’s. 

‘I want it—how can you doubt—?’ 

He shook his head and rested his elbow against the wall above her ear, and covered her bare breast with his other hand. ‘No. Don’t be ower-nice about it.’ 

Her jaw was squared and firm, but her eyes were luminous and her mouth pliant. Her hand was still on his cock; he thrust into it as an earnest of his intent. 

‘Baise-moi,’ she said, lowering her gaze demurely. ‘Putain de salaud.’ 

He grinned in appreciation. ‘Hoist your petticoats for me, flower.’ 

She did, and with them rucked about her hips, he touched her again; she was sopping. He squatted slightly to push his yard between her thighs, straightening up to lift her off her feet as it slid into her cunt. He had the confidence of a man who knows himself far from modestly made, but the knowledge that only one other had preceded him here aroused in him a ridiculous competitiveness: she must feel every inch of him. 

Her squeal upon his entry modulated into something more guttural as he found a rhythm, emptied his mind of everything but the sweet, soft, enveloping warmth of her—and the humming fool’s fire of magic, of course, that could not be dismissed or denied. The effort, agreeable as it was, made sweat spring on his brow and trickle into his eyes. 

‘Not—too heavy?’ she gasped. 

‘Nay, lass, you’re as light as thist—’ 

Oh, hell. One _man_ , perhaps. But what was _dancing_ but a mincing genteel term for this; what was this, but a dance? He remembered the wives’ tales of his childhood: _the Deil was mickle, blake and ghaistly, he swived witches with a prick as hard and cold as an iron gad, and the nature that flowed from it was as chill as spring-well-water_ — 

‘—thin air,’ he grunted, doubling his thrusts to drive the thought from him and keep his cockstand. If it were so, she needed this more than he had thought, much more than he did: he could not fail her. 

Her moans of pleasure were genuine enough, he thought, but he suspected that final clenching about his prick, the half-dozen rapid pulses upon it, were something of a calculation, to draw his spirit forth, rather than a natural expression of her own gratification. It worked, anyway: he came inside her, hot, helpless and human. The ignis fatuus went out like a candleflame pinched between damp fingers, leaving no trace behind. 

He lowered her gently to her feet, wincing as he softened and slid out of her: a decent fuck always left him feeble as a kitten; it was an unexpected encounter with magic, he supposed. He took her small head between his hands and pressed a kiss to her curled hairline, and stepped aside, tucking himself in and buttoning, to fetch their discarded clothes. 

He held out the article of gauze that she had worn in her neck. ‘I’ve ruined your partlet, Mrs Strange. I’m sorry for it.’ He would buy her another at a tailor’s booth on the Piazza. No, that would be no replacement: in a city as full of English gossip as Venice, she couldn’t wear it out of doors or in. Knap one, then. He hadn’t prigged anything since—he touched the line scored down his right cheek. Lascelles'd had a stiff one when he’d done it, odious little man. 

She took it, arranging it approximately over her exposed bosom, whose blotchy flush was perhaps not strictly speaking beautiful, but knowing how it had got there was. ‘Not for anything else, I hope.’ 

‘No fear of me. Though we were lucky—’ He still had to be, if he was to get past that redoubtable maid a whole man: the light had gone out for them, but the variety of susceptibility was endless; she might well still be englamoured and furious. He fidgeted with his stock and shrugged into his waistcoat. ‘But you, madam?’ 

She looked at him very steadily and clear. ‘He said—I should not wait. Not be a widow.’ 

He froze, one arm in his coat. Bile, yellow and jealous-bitter, rose in his throat. ‘You’ve seen—spoken to—him?’ 

‘I think so. I don’t think I can say more and keep my composure. But he’s not dead. He’s—somewhere. Forgive me, John.’ 

He was a nesh bugger, he supposed, but nothing undid him like courage. You saw so little of it, for one thing, and for another, his master’s lack of it had been the cause of so much needless, pitiful destruction and pain. John knew Gilbert Norrell better than any man: he should never have made his weak character bear the weight of his own vicarious ambition. He swung around, shoving his other arm into his coat, and his brimming eye landed on the spellbook that lay open on a nearby ottoman. 

‘It was decided that Miss Greysteel’s reading matter should be more closely supervised,’ he said, pocketing it. 

‘I have been remiss in my duties as a marr—I mean, a mature companion.’ She was twisting his black queue-ribbon between her fingers. 

‘Keep it, if you like. Souvenir of a crowded afternoon.’ 

‘No.’ She handed it back. He put it in his pocket with the spellbook. He couldn’t tie up his hair in front of people, the same way some men couldn’t piss in company. It always fell straight down again. It fell down anyway. He should crop it altogether, but he entertained Samsonish superstitions about that. A door opened behind him, and Mrs Strange’s drawing-room manner settled on them both like a veil—a widow’s or a bride’s, though? He couldn’t be sure. ‘How long are you in Venice, Mr Childermass?’ 

‘As long as it takes to get the business done, Mrs Strange.’ 

‘I am always at home on Thursday afternoons, even if Miss Greysteel is not.’ 

He inclined his head with a smile, and turned to face Nemesis in a mob-cap.

**Author's Note:**

> Baise-moi: in modern French, 'Fuck me'; in earlier usage, more plausibly deniable as 'kiss me', but 'baiser' to mean more than kissing occurs at least as far back as the 16th century.
> 
> Putain de salaud: in terms of insulting force, somewhere between 'son of a bitch' and 'fucking bastard.'
> 
> mickle, blake and ghaistly (Yorks): tall, with an unhealthy complexion, ghostly
> 
> knap, prig (thieves' cant): steal.
> 
> nesh (Yorks): soft, sentimental.


End file.
